Our School

School Day 

Student Instructional Hours: 7:30 a.m. – 2:20 p.m.  (doors open at 7 a.m.)
Office Hours: 7:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Tardiness 

All students are expected to be in class at 7:30 a.m. each morning. Your child will be considered tardy after 7:30 a.m. and must report to the main office to obtain a tardy pass. Parents must accompany their child to the office.

Dismissal

Early dismissal of students is handled in the main office. If a parent wishes to pick up his/her child during the day, he/she must come in to the office to properly sign the child out of school. Students must be signed out prior to 1:45 p.m. in order to be released early. The parent will be asked to show identification. Should the parent send another adult to pick up his/her child, written authorization from the parent is required. DEPARTURE PROCEDURES OF STUDENTS WILL NOT BE ALTERED WITHOUT WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS FROM PARENTS.  

Change of Family Information

Parents are asked to keep mailing addresses, ALL phone numbers, place of employment, legal custody rights, and emergency contact information up to date and accurate at all times. Please notify the school office immediately in the event of any changes in information.

Visitors  

For the safety of our students, we require that all parents and visitors are required to present a photo ID in order to enter the building.  

Pledge of Allegiance and Moment of Silence

Teachers will involve students in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and observing a moment of silence each day. This is required by South Carolina law. 

ParentSquare

Lexington County School District One believes in regular, high-quality communication between home, school and community.  In fact, research shows that students with informed and involved parents do better academically.  In an effort to improve the way we communicate with you, Lexington One will use ParentSquare.  ParentSquare consolidates all district, school and classroom communications into one user-friendly portal and allows families to choose how they want to receive their communications (text, email, or app notifications) and when they receive them. 

Celebrating Birthdays

We do want to celebrate students' birthdays at school, and we want students to feel special and recognized. Please only send in snacks or treats that are able to be distributed individually.  For example, cookies, cupcakes, donuts, muffins, pre-packaged pretzels/chips, etc.  Items such as pencils, crayons, etc. can also be given as birthday treats. Please contact your child’s teacher before sending snacks to school for the class.

Collaborative Planning/Early Release Days

During Teacher-Led Collaborative Planning, teachers get together to creatively discuss and solve educational issues, find solutions and plan instruction. The focus is on improving teaching and learning. Teachers will work in grade level or subject area groups. They will review instructional materials, plan for specific instructional interventions for students, plan detailed academic teaching strategies, or, if requested by teachers, receive training on an instructional concept, instructional materials, or instructional equipment.

Elementary students will be dismissed at 11:20 AM on these days (lunch will be served).

Smoke-free Campus

Midway Elementary School, like all schools in Lexington School District One, is a smoke-free campus. Parents, visitors, and staff members are not permitted to smoke on this campus.

School Store  

(Available for 1st through 5th grade) Midway Elementary School has a school store that will be located close to the main entrance.  Hours of operation are 7:15 – 7:35 a.m. Monday through Friday.  Only items that are needed at school are sold in the school store.  Examples include glue sticks, pencils, notebook paper, erasers, and markers.

With the opening of a new school on Midway Road, Lexington School District One revived a name rich in history — Midway Elementary School. The first recorded information about a school in the general area of the Midway Elementary School site is over 100 years old. Minutes from the Young Peoples Home and Foreign Missionary Society of Ford Road School House cites a meeting of that group on May 30, 1891, in the schoolhouse. The Society’s records of January 8, 1893, show the name appearing as “Midway;” however, it wasn’t until September 30, 1894, that the minutes indicated that the school name “be changed so as to read Midway instead of Ford Road.”

Specific records such as Annual Reports of the School Commissioners were not available for the period believed to include the formation of the Ford Road School House. Accounts from former students, however, indicate there were two school buildings in the area of the present Midway Elementary. The first was a two-story School located on the same property of the present school. Some say “Midway” got its name when the district decided to locate the school “midway” between the areas that it served. To settle the question of where the district was, reports indicate that the distance between the farthest homes in the district was actually measured. Thereafter, a second, two-room school located off Oliver Meetze Road was constructed. It was known as Midway School. This school served students in grade 1-4 in one room and grades 5, 6, and 7 in the other room. Those wishing to continue their education past the seventh grade went to high school in Lexington. 

 

 

 

Students of Midway School still have vivid memories of times spent traveling either on foot or in an A-Model or T-Model to and from school. The school was heated with a “big, pot-bellied wood stove” in each room and there was a stage that was brought in for special plays and performances. Special events included oyster stew suppers and school closings. The school closings were similar to an end-of-the-year party with plays, exercises and drills. Even textbook titles such as the Sims History of South Carolina, Baby Ray, and the Child’s World Reader are still clear in the minds of many students. Not only are the memories clear as a picture to some, the actual framed pictures — “Spring Song” and “Dutch Windmill” — which hung in Midway School still grace two Lexington County homes.

Like other small communities, church services were often held at Midway. Pilgrim Evangelical Lutheran Church was organized at Midway School House on September 17, 1899, by the Rev. J.A.Cromer. During times when no school was being held, people from the Zion and Pilgrim communities attended special singing and writing schools at Midway.

As school consolidations became popular in Lexington County, the Midway District closed around 1928-29, and students began attending school on a site presently used as Lexington Elementary. It is believed that the Woman’s League auctioned items from the Midway School and monies raised were used to buy the first cross at Pilgrim Evangelical Lutheran Church. The original piano used by Pilgrim was first used in Midway School.

Now, a century later, students are attending Midway School — a school still closely linked to Pilgrim and many of the students who attended the earlier Midway School.  Property for the Midway Elementary School was purchased from Pilgrim Evangelical Lutheran Church and Mr. Martin Meetze in 1993.

Midway Elementary’s History (print friendly version)

MIDWAY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL VISION

 Empower each child to design the future.

 MIDWAY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL MISSION

 Our mission is to cultivate a caring community where ALL learners are extraordinary communicators, collaborators, creators and critical thinkers.

 MIDWAY ELEMENTARY BELIEFS:

• Learning environment that advocates for the personal physical and emotional safety and diversity of all participants. 
• Outcome-based learning activities that balance collaboration, personal choice, risk-taking, and independent work within the curriculum standards. 
• Differentiated instruction that maintains high expectations while respecting the individual differences of learners. 
• Active collaboration with all stakeholders (i.e., students, parents, staff, community members, secondary education, higher education, etc.). 
• Learning activities that focus on developing 21st Century Skills for Global Citizenship (i.e., accountability, adaptability, creativity, integrity, problem-solving, productivity, reflective listening, resiliency, self-direction).